The Duplicity Hypothesis
by MrsVincentCrabbe
Summary: COMPLETE: How do you betray your best friend? With Stetson hats and perfume like sunshine. Written for Paradox's Fiction Friday/Smutty Saturday prompt: rodeo, laundry, perfume, and confession.
1. The Blue Gingham Corollary

_Written for Paradox's July 31st Fiction Friday/Smutty Saturday challenge: rodeo, laundry, perfume, confession_

Sheldon had always assumed that Penny's threat of going 'Junior Rodeo' on them was just that, a threat. He didn't expect for her to barrel into their apartment as they were heading out for their second day at the Renaissance Fair, brandishing five tickets to the Rodeo and shouting "Yeehaw" as she pushed them into his hands.

"Get out your gear, Cowboy, we're going to the Rodeo," she smiled at him.

"No," he squeaked, pushing the tickets back toward her.

"No?" she repeated, her voice low with disbelief and a little anger.

"I refuse to sit in a stadium of kissing cousins, smelling the stench of all man and bovine kind, getting showered in a steady stream of peanut shells, to watch 8 seconds of entertainment. Besides, we're going back to the Renaissance Fair." She glanced down to him dressed as Spock and quirked an eyebrow. He really shouldn't have loaned her the Original Series.

"Sheldon," she smiled sweetly and he smiled back, naive to her trickery. She reached up and ripped a molded Vulcan ear off, frowning. "Dust off your old Cowboy clothes, Sheldon, we're going to the Rodeo."

So Sheldon found himself squeezed between Howard and Penny at the Rodeo. She was dressed in a short denim skirt that he wouldn't have recommended for such unsanitary conditions, a blue gingham shirt she had tied the tails of beneath her bust and a black Stetson cocked over her cowgirl braids. He saw Howard drool a little every time Penny would jump up and down as the bull tried to buck the cowboys off. Leonard was giggling like a schoolgirl and Raj was decidedly mute.

Sheldon made a quick glance at his companions. Leonard had over dressed, not exactly thinking about the fact that this wasn't a date but a kidnapping. Raj had come in his normal sweater-vest but he noticed it had a dusky red and black desert motif across the bottom. Points for subtlety, Sheldon conceded. Howard was in a garish Turquoise cowboy outfit, complete with silver bangles on the white, fringed collar. He had a large white Stetson that he kept trying to tip up with his thumb but it resolutely fell into his eyes the more he tried.

Sheldon had done just as he had been instructed by Penny: he dusted off his old plaid working shirts and jeans, even managing to dig up his grandfather's burnished gold belt buckle before Penny had banged on his bedroom door and told him it was three minutes until she picked the lock and drug him out. That was the quickest he had ever dressed in his life.  
Penny cheered, sloshing her beer a little as she jumped to her feet. Sheldon amused himself by calculating the angle of degrees each rider was shifting his center of gravity in order to remain on the bucking bull. He glanced over at Leonard, trying to whisper something into Penny's ear but she was waving him off as they announced the results. Leonard sighed a little but turned his attention back to arena.

Sheldon soon found himself so engrossed in the mathematics of the display before him, he hadn't noticed the slight sheen of sweat on his body from the hot stadium and cramped seating. He had noticed the way the humidity made his hair not lay quite as perfectly flat as he liked it to be or that he had been forced to roll his sleeves up to his elbows at some point. He glanced over at his compatriots to see them all in similar states of shabby disarray because of the heat; all but Penny. She seemed still in her element, the sweat just making her skin glow more brightly in the stadium's dusky lights. The dust in the air was swirling the light waves and making the hair loosed from her braids look like a halo. He couldn't help but appreciate the way her flat stomach dipped around her hipbones, how the lean muscles of her upper arms curved into her shoulders, how that one bead of sweat was languidly dripping down into the valley of her breasts....

He flushed with a new heat that had nothing to do with the masses of people around him or the stifling air stale with beer. He glanced back toward Penny to see her wink at him, the testosterone in the air feeding his blush. He resolutely looked back toward the display in the ring and refused to glance to his left.

"WHOOOP!" Penny danced her way up the stairs. "Now that, boys, THAT is my kind of fun." Leonard was simpering and smiling. Howard was smug about the lady he had hooked up with down by the Clown's barrels and being generally intolerable. Raj was muttering about steaks someone behind him, having ingested enough beer at the rodeo to lower his inhibitions. Sheldon felt the frozen, sticky sweat on his skin crack as he stretched his neck. He rubbed the spot and felt the grit from the arena dust on his flesh. Penny turned around and blocked the stairway. "Tell me you guys had fun."

"Oh, yeah," Leonard agreed. Howard chuckled lecherously and Raj nudged him with a friendly elbow. Sheldon thrust his hands into his jeans' pocket before he looked up at Penny's eyes. He tried to think about how hot it had been, how sweaty he had become, about the smell and the unsanitary seats and the animals. Instead, all he could see is the way she was standing before them, one hip cocked to the side, her arms stretched and her hands pressed against both walls, her skirt riding up for thighs slightly...in that moment, he knew how Leonard felt in her presence.

"More than I would have guessed," he conceded to her. She smiled brightly at him before turning on her cowboy boots and trooping back up the stairs. He studied the pattern on her boots thoroughly, if only to keep his eyes away from the way she was swinging her hips.

The night was winding down in a haze of trying to ignore Howard's attempts to recount the tale of his sexual prowess with Sarah, the Iowa farm girl who was stupid enough or naive enough to believe him to be the undersecretary to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Penny had sat next to him, seemingly quite happy with herself. Howard and Raj filtered out of the apartment as the alcohol started to wane from Raj's blood, leaving the neighbors to themselves. Penny stood suddenly, pulled her skirt down where it had ridden up as she sat, and said her goodnights. Leonard received a kiss on the cheek and a whisper that Sheldon couldn't even conjecture to the nature of. He refused to look at that. As she made her way to the door, she caught Sheldon's eyes and winked again, her pigtails bouncing around those smooth shoulders. He felt that flush again, jolting through the arteries deep inside his body.

He saw her black Stetson sitting on the couch where she had just been sitting, radiating something he couldn't name. He followed her to the door, waving the hat towards Leonard to let him know where he was going. Leonard laughed and told him to 'hurry up, partner, we still got to marathon some Firefly before bed'. Sheldon smiled weakly, thinking this was akin to blasphemy. He opened the door and made his way over to the green door he knew rather well, something different than intellect raising his hand to knock.

She opened the door, smiling at him. "Hi, Sheldon," she whispered. She had taken her hair out of their braids, leaving it softly kinked over her shoulders. He held out the hat. He gave him a questioning glance that made tremble slightly around the knees.

"You forgot it...on the couch." She took the hat and plopped it on his head, her fingers ghosting past his cheek. They watched each other for a moment and all Sheldon could see was the goosebumps on the exposed part of her breasts above her half unbuttoned gingham shirt and the way she was looking at his hands, the way that felt like treason. He slowly raised his arms and took of the hat, laying it into her hands before turned on his heel and marching back to his apartment.

He opened the door slowly to see Leonard in his bathrobe, sitting in Penny's spot with his feet propped up on the coffee table. Sheldon couldn't say anything to him tonight, couldn't rebuke him when he had been so carried away by his own feelings, something he had held careful reign over for so long. He pushed them back in light of Leonard's face, in the light of Leonard's hopes, because anything else would have been blasphemy indeed.

_Originally posted on Livejournal on 31 July, 2009_


	2. The Benedict Arnold Theorem

_Originally posted on Livejournal on 1 August, 2009_

He just wanted to do his laundry in peace. It was a simple matter. He wished to wash his clothes without distractions; distractions he had to battle internally, constantly. But, there she was, like clockwork, standing in the door frame with her laundry basket balanced on one hip and her sleep tank top bunching above her hipbones. She didn't realize what she did, how she looked to him just then. Perhaps, he speculated, she knows precisely what she does to us. He focused on his attention onto his Superman shirt, ignoring the way her bare feet pattered gently on the tile floor.

"I would not go barefoot in this room, Penny," he said, proud that his voice held just the right amount of disdain and superiority when he spoke. Sheldon could see her bare feet in the corner of his vision and he stopped moving altogether. She shifted her weight to her toes, arching her foot to swivel quickly around. The muscles in her calves were taut and firm and he went back to his folding as quickly as possible.

"Ugh, Sheldon, don't be so uptight." He saw her turn back on her toes and heard her dump her entire load into a washing machine. He rolled his eyes, feeling himself mixed between amusement and shame. He quickly folded the rest of his t-shirts. He heard a thump and turned his head quickly to see her pushing herself up to sit on the empty washing machine next to her used one. She was wildly, vastly different from the Penny from the rodeo, the Penny who had made fire in his blood, did things to his body. This Penny didn't have any make-up or carefully designed hair. She didn't glow from external sources but seemed to radiate from somewhere within. This Penny was normal, average, workaday; and she lit a fire deeper than before. The pale natural pink of her lips was more alluring than any false color she could paint on them. Her eyes the brightest green when not clouded by heavy powders and shimmering cosmetics.  
He watched as her heels bumped the metal machine behind her rhythmically and he knew that was aware of what she did to him.

She smiled and he grabbed his basket roughly off the table.

"You don't have to leave," she said quickly. He didn't want to turn around. To turn around was to admit that he, in fact, didn't have to leave. He needed to leave. He had to get out of there, away from her, away from the way she planted treacherous thoughts in his brain. He thought he could feel her closing in behind him, feel a whisper of a breath on the skin of his neck, that same ghostly touch of her hand. He left the room as fast as possible.

---

"Are you avoiding me?" Sheldon leveled a dark gaze at her as she sat again on that washing machine, another Saturday, another distraction.

"You could only say that if I had ever purposefully sought out your company," he deadpanned, eyes trained on the blue plastic before him.

"Just thought I'd ask, Sheldon," she scoffed, kicking that washing machine again.

"Have no fear, Penny, our relationship paradigm is quite rigidly set. There is no reason why we should change it in any way." He looked up to see a curious look fitted on her face. He refused to define it. He pushed into that ever helpful box of Human Interactions He Would Forever Shun and Misunderstand. In that box, he wouldn't feel the intense desire to break it apart, define it, know it. There, he could lock it away safely. She crossed her toned and tanned legs. Did she remember those moments after the rodeo? Had she read different emotions and meanings into the actions? Back into the box, safely tucked away.

"I just thought that maybe..." bang, bang, bang went her feet against the metal washing machine.

"Not surprisingly, you thought wrong. Not quite as unusual as it might seem to you." She jumped from her perch and grabbed her laundry out of the dryer. Sheldon's eyes narrowed as she threw the dried clothes unfolded into her basket and stormed from the laundry room without looking back.

At first, relief that he could do his laundry in peace flooded through him. It was quickly replaced with the image of her perfectly painted toes and the way he could see the outline of white lace under her almost transparent pajama shorts. And then he realized that he could never force her to storm out of his mind, no matter how many insulting things he said or how many boxes he built inside. Instead, like a poltergeist, she would forever remind him of her presence with noises and chaos.

Bang, bang, bang was the rhythm he folded his shirts.

Bang, bang, bang was the sound his feet made on the stairs.

Bang, bang, bang was the jeering lullaby that kept him from sleep that night.

The problem with his consciously built boxes was that it was the greatest fun his unconscious could have; to unpack his carefully guarded thoughts and leave them haphazardly scattered around his brain. So when he would awake from very few hours of sleep, his body would be thrumming with coarse, hot blood and muscles taut with anticipation. His mouth would be open and slack, his breath harsh and hot, his head pressed back into the pillow. He would shut his eyes, clench his hands, dig his clipped nails into the soft flesh of his palm. He tried to force those images from his mind: flashes of white lace and tanned skin, thumbs trailing down a flat stomach to rub the crests of her hips, pink toes tangled in navy blue sheets. Images that were born of imagination and desire, not experience or knowledge.

This he could have dealt with, the betrayal of his body. He could forgive himself for feeling the searing heat of her flesh on his, for losing his breath when she would whisper in his ear words no woman had said to him. It was normal, evolutionary, justifiable. But to have his mind revel in the pride he had at wrapping his hands around her waist and lifting her hips to meet his, or the way he couldn't help but smile when she sighed into his mouth with satisfaction. He couldn't forgive his mind, trained rigorously like a soldier by himself, had let him delight in these phantom caresses and fantastical lies.

So, he breathed and hoped his body would calm. He could feel his face twisted with unfulfilled desire, feel his body rigid with demand. He dug his hands into the sheets to waylay the temptation, to keep his mind in check. But, instead, his mind ran away with him. In the absence of her corporeal self, Sheldon's mind supplied a specter form. He could feel her hands sliding up the outside of his thighs, her thumbs hooking in the elastic waist of his plaid bottoms. He could almost feel her breath on him, hot and wanting and as desperate as he was.

He jolted out of bed and put himself in the corner, head hanging in shame. He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Bang, bang, bang went his head on the wall. He heard Leonard coming through the hallway so he stepped back, arms crossed across his middle, back to the door.

"Sheldon, what was that?"

"I'm not convinced that this wall has the proper amount of support." Sheldon took the chance to glance over his shoulder. It wasn't a lie; he didn't believe that wall had to proper amount of support.

"So, you set out to knock it down at four in the morning?"

"I couldn't sleep-" he trailed off but Leonard finished the thought for him.

"With the danger of a collapsing wall in your immediate vicinity, yeah, I got it," Leonard said in that voice, that voice Sheldon had come to know as the "I'm going to tolerate your crazy because you are my friend" voice. "Night, buddy." He heard the door shut and he held a hand to his face to stop the tics.

He wouldn't lose the only person in this world who tolerated him, who used that voice with him.

He wouldn't lose that to some Benedict Arnold dreams and hormonal fluctuations. He wouldn't.


	3. The Sunshine Enlightenment

It had become sickeningly, sickeningly real when Leonard went New England to visit his parents on their anniversary. She had donned a new perfume that evening for a night on the town and she had shoved the soft skin of her wrist under his nose. He sniffed it cautiously, knowing what his eyes would look like, how his face would be flushed. Her perfume was dusty like sunshine and warm like butter and it fogged his brain in a way he didn't like, didn't trust. He tried to glance up at her but was afraid to let her see his eyes, let her know of the sudden rush of desire that happened. So, he stepped away from her outstretched arm, trying to put the distance he needed between them. But she followed him, shut the apartment door, grabbed his hand. He saw her eyes were wide and bright, begging him to know.

And he sees her. She is Penny, from across the hall. She is a Queen. She is a goddess. She is a lioness.

She is his.

So he buries his hands in her blond hair and pulls her to him with all the haste of his suffering. She follows him, urging it all to move faster, get farther. She pushes him past the couch, past the kitchen, steadying him as he stumbles over the step into the hallway but never lets his lips or hands leave her body. His fingers slide down to her shoulders, under the strings that were holding her dress up, and he knew that she had never planned to leave. That all this was careful planning on her part, all for him, all for the need. She had known. She had seen through all his defenses and slights and walls and boxes.

He didn't remember opening the door but he remembered sliding those straps down her arms before hearing the gentle whoosh of fabric hitting the floor. He could remember pressing her into his mattress, discovering the heat of her body to be hotter than anything he had imagined. He remembered when it was he whose hands snaked up her thighs and his thumbs hooking into the purple lace of her underwear. Her hands snaked under his shirts, pushing them over his head and onto the floor. It was her who shimmed the comforter down from under her and her who pushed his khakis down his legs.

And it was wrong, wrong, wrong, his mind would chant to him, trying to get him to give into himself, into his inexperienced nervousness that he had been suppressing. Instead, his body chanted, right, right right and his mind shut down from instinct and fantasy. His lips followed the path of that long evaporated bead of sweat from the rodeo, searing his need like a map on her body. He felt her toes curl against his shins when he finally wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her hips to his. And he felt that prideful smirk of his fantasy on his face when she whispered things in his ear as he moved within her, burying his nose into her neck, into her hair, his lips tasting the oils of her perfume. And her hands gripped him, her breath scorched him, her eyes cherished him.

And it was better than any dream. It shattered his box and opened unto him a new plane of experience as her thighs pressed his lean hips and her teeth grazed his earlobe.

And in that last moment, she brought her face close, her lips hovered teasingly over his, stealing his breath, changing his life.

Shattering his stacks of mental boxes and long built walls.

And he realized this hadn't been some Neanderthalic contest of mating rights or an animalistic pride battle. This had been about Penny; always, forever about Penny. This had been Penny's rodeo, not theirs.

And it had always been up to Penny to make that choice.

As she settled against his soul, against his body, into his bed, he thought that maybe he had underestimated Leonard and his views on life, maybe he had underestimated the power of human emotion, maybe he had underestimated himself. So he looked into her eyes as she claimed his shoulder as her own and let her know that he knew now, that he understood, and that he had made his decision too.

That is was always, forever her.

_Originally posted on Livejournal on 2 August, 2009_


End file.
